Seems some fossils are cheaper than others, and the Big Oil guys are not happy that Asia is buying so much Big Coal. Apparently quite a few Big Oil companies have become predominantly more Big Gas companies, but they are struggling against cheaper coal and lower demand.
It’s just a coincidence that four big oil gas companies are also headed by guys who want to save the Earth (with gas):
June 5th, 2015: Shell, Total, BP Plc and other oil companies said … that they’re banding together to promote gas as more climate friendly than coal.
Here’s the head of French oil supermajor Total this week describing how coal is the competition:
Mr Pouyanne, who last year declared coal was “the enemy” of the gas industry, told the LNG18 conference in Perth that LNG demand was suffering just as a raft of new projects were coming on.
“We face a situation where we have more supply than demand, which has grown slower than expected because of competition between coal and gas,” he said.
“In Asian countries there is a shift from gas to coal because, the coal price has collapsed as well.”
Here’s another gas company head lamenting that the Paris agreement is not helping Big Oil enough, I mean, helping the planet:
Origin Energy managing director Grant King has joined the head of French oil supermajor Total in criticising nations that signed up to the Paris climate treaty but are increasing their use of coal at the expense of gas.
“The thing that is a big puzzle is that the world entered into a treaty to limit emissions to 2 degrees, yet many of the countries in that treaty are increasing coal consumption and it doesn’t square,” Mr King told The Australian on the sidelines of the LNG18 conference in Perth.
“Something’s got to give, you just can’t keep chasing lower emissions and adding higher intensity fuels into the mix.”
Big Oil-Gas CEO’s care about the climate, so they are worried when people are not switching to gas instead of coal, hence the need for the government to jump in and hobble the competition:
“We call for a carbon pricing mechanism because we think, and we observe today, that nothing is happening because of the differential in pricing between coal and gas,” he [Mr Pouyanne] said.
The Big-Oil guys will be more convincing when they offer to sell their gas as cheap as coal — “for the planet”.
Read more about the story in The Australian : Origin’s Grant King joins Total opposition to climate hypocrites
UPDATE: DavidS says I thought Big Oil was the funding source for sceptics. The reality is that big oil is the funding source for big Oil.